In the year and a half before Donald Trump retook control of the White House, Bayly Winder worked at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the arm of the U.S. government responsible for distributing foreign aid around the world. Shortly after he left the agency at the beginning of this year, President Donald Trump took a hatchet to USAID, and the work Winder and his colleagues did became the first casualty of the Trump administration’s “government efficiency” efforts.
Now Winder, a New Jersey native, is back in his home state and running for Congress. A Democrat, Winder is announcing a campaign today against Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-Dennis), who represents the Republican-leaning southern reaches of the state where Winder once spent his summers; the conservative congressman, Winder says, has lost touch with the voters of the 2nd congressional district.
“People across this district are really sick and tired of partisan games, political theater, and establishment politicians,” Winder told the New Jersey Globe. “When you look at Jeff Van Drew and the way that he’s conducted himself recently – not holding in-person town halls, being more focused on providing tax breaks for the elite than for the middle class, and doing things like slashing Medicaid after saying he would protect it – I think that adds up to a picture that people are not comfortable with.”
One other Democrat, Terri Reese, is already running in the Democratic primary to take on Van Drew, and several others are looking at the race, including previous Democratic nominees for the seat. But the 33-year-old Winder could bring more national connections to the race – potentially following in the footsteps of other New Jersey Democrats like Andy Kim and Tom Malinowski who successfully made the leap from national security positions into Congress.
The task of unseating Van Drew will not be an easy one, though, and Democrats have not made the 2nd district a priority in recent cycles. Van Drew, a Democrat himself until his famous party switch in 2019, has won his last two re-election campaigns by runaway margins; the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s initial lists of races to watch in 2026 included multiple New Jersey districts, and the 2nd district wasn’t one of them.
Winder, a fourth-generation New Jerseyan and the grandson of the Middle East-focused academic R. Bayly Winder, grew up primarily in Princeton, far from the boundaries of the 2nd district. But he spent his summers on the Shore with his family in places like Barnegat Light and Cape May, coastal towns at the heart of the district.
“I spent considerable time in this district growing up,” Winder said. “I have really fond memories of being with my family and going to the Shore down here in South Jersey. It’s a place that’s meant a lot to my family over multiple generations. I’m thrilled to be here for the long term.”
Soon after graduating from college, Winder began his career in public service, working in the State Department under both Barack Obama and Donald Trump as a foreign affairs officer with a particular focus on Iran. He then spent several years in the private sector before joining USAID during the Biden administration as as a political appointee. The decision by Trump to target America’s foreign aid during early months of his administration, Winder said, is a catastrophic mistake.
“It goes against American interests in a number of ways,” Winder said. “It’s hurting American farmers and small businesses across New Jersey, and it’s playing into the hands of our competitors like China. I believe that dismantling the government is not a solution, it’s actually leading to a lot of chaos and self-inflicted wounds.”
(That sets him apart from Van Drew, the most pro-Trump member of New Jersey’s congressional delegation and its most vocal critic of foreign aid; Van Drew said after the Trump administration’s initial wave of attacks against USAID that “we cannot continue to spend money we do not have on the things we do not need.”)
As the Biden administration wound down, Winder left USAID and moved back to New Jersey, settling in Mays Landing in Atlantic County. He has spent the last several months laying the groundwork for his 2nd district campaign, meeting with party leaders and voters in the district and penning an op-ed in the Asbury Park Press saying Democrats needed to “recalibrate” if they wanted to win back control of Congress in 2026.
Winder is now at last ready to officially throw his hat in the ring – and he’s doing so at an interesting time, given Trump’s recent strikes on Iranian nuclear sites and the potential entry of the United States into another prolonged Middle Eastern conflict. Drawing on his own past work on Iran policy, Winder said he was “extremely shocked” at Trump’s decision and worried about its long-term consequences.
“We’ve seen in the past that going into crises in the Middle East has ended up with us being entangled in forever wars, and we need to do everything we can to make sure that these types of steps are a last resort, not something that’s just decided arbitrarily,” he said. “Congress needs to stand up and do its job, and with Jeff Van Drew you’re not seeing that.”
The task Winder faces – a task shared by any Democrat who tries to unseat Van Drew – is convincing other Democrats around New Jersey and the rest of the country that the 2nd district is, in fact, winnable. While Democrats put huge amounts of money behind Amy Kennedy’s campaign to deny Van Drew a second term in 2020, they largely ignored the district the following two cycles, believing Van Drew could not be beaten.
Their pessimism was affirmed in 2024, when New Jersey swung dramatically towards Republicans on a presidential level. Trump won the 2nd district 55%-43%, carrying even the two longtime Democratic bastions of Cumberland and Atlantic Counties, the first time either had failed to support a Democratic presidential candidate since 1988; Van Drew, who served as Trump’s New Jersey campaign chairman, won a fourth term over Democratic businessman Joe Salerno by an even larger 58%-41% spread.
One Democratic-affiliated PAC, though, is intrigued enough by the possibility of making the 2nd district competitive next year that it publicized a poll last month testing out messaging against Van Drew and pitting him against a generic Democratic candidate. Van Drew led in that matchup 46%-36%, a lead that the poll argued could be overcome with the right candidate and messaging.
Winder has begun laying out some core planks of his policy platform, like tackling rising prices, pushing back on Trump’s tariffs, supporting a ban on stock trades, and holding in-person town halls, the last of which Van Drew and his fellow New Jersey Republicans have chosen not to do. Winder also said that his “bipartisan, pragmatic approach” would appeal to middle-of-the-road 2nd district voters who may disapprove of Van Drew’s close ideological and personal ties to Trump.
But perhaps more crucial than any other issue, both in the 2nd district and around the country, is Medicaid. A bill under consideration by Republicans in Congress could result in around 11 million Americans losing health care coverage, per nonpartisan estimates; Van Drew had been one of his party’s loudest critics of any potential Medicaid cuts, but when the bill came before him in the House, he supported it.
Van Drew argued that the bill would strengthen Medicaid by removing ineligible recipients and eliminating “waste, fraud, and abuse” – but Winder isn’t buying it.
“I’m here to protect Medicaid, Medicaid, and Social Security, without any exceptions,” Winder said. “Unlike Jeff Van Drew, I’m not going to say one thing and then do another with how I vote. I’m going to stick by those key programs no matter what, and make sure that they’re protected for families and seniors across the board.”
